DNA exclusive: Civil war cripples intel set-up
A few years ago, two senior Indian intelligence officials posted in
the Indian embassy in Berlin were locked in a furious turf war.
One officer belonged to the Intelligence Bureau (IB) while the other
was sent by the external intelligence agency RAW. The fracas got so ugly
that Meera Shankar, the Indian ambassador, had to step in. The RAW
officer was sent back to New Delhi.
Interestingly, both the
officers belonged to the Indian Police Service and had built a career in
intelligence. The difference of opinion started when the IB official
sent a secret controversial report stating that some Sikh families based
in Germany were helping raise funds to renew militancy in Punjab and
also helping Pakistan in their covert nuclear weapons programme. The
furious RAW officer countered with a detailed report calling the IB
official’s assessment fiction and stated that no evidence exists to
substantiate the intelligence inputs.
This is but an example of
the daily internecine turf wars that are being fought between India’s
multiple intelligence agencies in New Delhi and abroad. Part of the
problem is the proliferation of intelligence agencies with overlapping
charters. While RAW was created out of the IB in 1968 to gather external
intelligence, the internal intelligence agency has managed to claw its
way into creating stations abroad.
The last decade has seen the IB
create stations and post officers in Washington, London, Berlin,
Islamabad, the Middle East and a host of other nations. At the same
time, following the creation of the Defence Intelligence Agency (DIA)
after the Kargil war, the gathering of intelligence abroad has seen new
players emerge. With three parallel channels for gathering human
intelligence with little or no coordination this is a recipe for
disaster.
Matters got complicated with the ministry of external
affairs (MEA) also stepping in to try and conduct covert activities on
its own. The last five years saw Indian ambassadors in Afghanistan and
Nepal stepping into the domain usually preserved for intelligence
activities. This led the RAW chief to write several letters to the
government protesting against this “interference” by the MEA. At times,
this led to embarrassing situations when RAW officers posted in the
Indian embassy in Kathmandu were “ousted” by the local press due to this
turf war.
Following the 26/11 terror attack on Mumbai, after P
Chidambaram moved into the Union ministry of home affairs, he started
holding daily meetings with the IB and RAW chiefs. However, the chairman
of NTRO, the technical intelligence agency, was deliberately kept out.
This led to further confusion in the ranks about the roles each agency
would play. So while the IB would take a lead role in monitoring the
Internet, the NTRO, which was created to do this kind of technical
intelligence gathering, was kept out of the loop. Matters were further
complicated when RAW’s secret technical wing, the Aviation Research
Centre (ARC), began to delve into internet monitoring and other kinds of
technical intelligence gathering operations that should have been the
NTRO’s exclusive charter.
The command and control of the
intelligence agencies also led to a lot of confusion. The IB chief
reports to the Union home minister while the RAW chief reports to the
cabinet secretary for all practical purposes. The NTRO chairman reports
to the National Security Adviser and the DIA chief reports to the Union
defence minister. The other bodies created to achieve some kind of
coordination and assessments – the National Security Council
Secretariat, the Joint Intelligence Committee and the Multi Agency
Centre – are all busy working in isolation. With multiple channels
working under multiple commands, Indian intelligence continues to
flounder in the dark.
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